Chapter Eleven
Zanuck and Saroyan

In the late fifties, John Fante came to renew his acquaintance with the well-known producer Darryl Zanuck, who liked my dad’s work and had proposed a couple film projects in the past. Months went by but nothing happened. Finally, Zanuck gave my dad an assignment to write a screenplay called The Fish Don’t Bite.

Zanuck had moved to Paris by that time. So had my father’s old, close pal Bill Saroyan, who had hightailed it out of the country, the IRS hot on his heels to collect a huge back-tax debt.

My father was summoned to Zanuck’s Paris office, presumably to deliver his first draft of the movie script. But in Pop’s version of what happened, his new boss had another motive: Zanuck had a fondness for a particular brand of Cuban cigar that was unavailable in France and had given my father instructions to bring along several boxes in his luggage.

The reason Zanuck, who had recently retired as head of Columbia Pictures, was in France at all was Juliette Gréco, a beautiful French actress/singer. Coincidently, Saroyan was also involved with Gréco, and a triangle of trouble was in the wind.

Saroyan met my father at the airport. He was broke as usual and explained how Zanuck had paid him to write a play for Gréco, then written a large check for his two weeks of sloppy work. (William Saroyan was in the habit of writing his plays in less than ten days.)

Zanuck’s check was not even cold in the bank’s till when Bill blew the money in Monte Carlo. He was now desperate to make the rent at his Paris hotel. As he and my father drove toward the city, Saroyan, chain-smoking, began removing manuscripts from the pockets of his overcoat. My father’s carousing pal was notorious for his short attention span. “Whaddya think of this, Johnny?” he’d ask, passing a typed manuscript across the backseat of the taxi.

Pop would read a few lines or a page, hand the piece back, and say, “It needs work, Bill,” or, “It’s not believable.”

As John Fante returned each story, Saroyan threw it out of the car’s back window. Finally, after four discarded manuscripts, he was through, and he slumped in the backseat. Then, a moment later, he was grinning at my father. “Paris is a kick, Johnny. You’ll love it here. The women are incredible.”

The next day at Zanuck’s office, my father delivered his screenplay and the cigars. Zanuck thanked him, then handed Pop a manuscript. “I paid Saroyan to write this for Juliette,” he hissed. “The sonofabitch has been banging her. The only way I could get rid of him and keep him away from her was to hire him. Do me a favor, John: Go sit in the other room and read this play, then tell me what you think. I’ll have the girl bring you lunch.”

My father spent the next two hours reading the play. When he returned to Zanuck’s office, he handed his boss the manuscript. “Well,” said Zanuck, “good or no good? Yes or no?”

Pop was on the spot. Saroyan was an old friend and a gambling buddy and occasionally a brilliant writer. My father had a literary code he tried to live by: Never criticize another writer’s work or damage his reputation in front of his boss.

“In my opinion,” my father said, “it’s a good idea but it can use some revision.”

That was all Zanuck needed to hear. He said “thank you,” spun around in his swivel chair, and dumped the fifty-thousand-dollar manuscript in his trash can.

Two weeks later, after nightly carousing with his pal Saroyan, falling off the wagon badly, and getting mugged outside a Paris bar, John Fante delivered his completed rewrites of the screenplay The Fish Don’t Bite to Zanuck. A week of anticipation went by with no phone call from the producer or his office. Finally, Zanuck’s assistant called. “Mr. Zanuck asked me to thank you for your contribution to the film script. At present he has decided to reconsider the project.” Months of John Fante’s work were in the crapper.

At lunch a day later with Willie Saroyan, my father told his friend the bad news. When the subject of Saroyan’s financial problems came up, Willie smiled. “I’m on Zanuck’s payroll again—sort of,” he said. “He’s paying me to read for him. A grand a week. Film scripts and various folderol, anything to keep me away from Gréco. Matter of fact, I read one last week. I forget the title. But it was a real piece of shit. I told Z to take a pass.”

My father was curious. “What was it about?” he asked.

Saroyan went on to explain the plot. When he was done, John Fante was stunned. “That was my script, Bill.”

“C’mon, Johnny, you’re kiddin’ me.”

“My name was on the title page. Didn’t you read the goddamn title page?”

“I never read the title page. I don’t care who wrote it. Christ, Johnny, I’m sorry.”

The two men did not speak again for five years.